My point is that Hollywood often does not understand that the vast majority of the American public’s values and cultural preferences are not Hollywood’s. How many of last year’s Oscar movies were successful at the box office? How many do you remember? The Oscars Award TV show viewership is at an all time low. And what is the biggest box office success this year? Top Gun 2. Will it even be nominated for an Oscar Award? You know the answer
Most of the movies which get nominated and win are smaller stories about relationships and families because that is where the acting chops kick in. Members of the Academy, actors and other industry people, select who gets nominated and who wins. Like the CMA or any other award, these are PR exercises to stoke interest in whatever product the industries produce. Most of us have not seen the recent winners, you are certainly right about that.
I’ll bet Top Gun gets some award or two for live action photography, CGI, etc.
There has almost always been a disconnect between award winning and what general audiences like. Award winning films are more about drama and acting. General audiences want simple entertainment. Hollywood has its faults but it is no more different today than 20-30 years ago.
I really dont understand the points you are trying to make,it is like you just cut and paste points from sites you frequent.
Why dont you just say what YOU dont like about todays movies?
Coda which won was a fantastic film.
Will Smith was fantastic in King Richard and so was Jessica Chastain.
Top Gun will likely get nominated for best cinematography.
There is a reason award films are not released in the summer.
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Look up (almost) any recent movie star’s list of films and you won’t even know some of them they made. Make the big money on a summer film and you can afford to work for scale on some small project that attracts you. I get that part.
Movies and TV reflect our culture, they don’t give our culture to us. They are a mirror. Even Housewives of (insert city here).
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At the end of the day studios are in the business of making money.
Often to measure the financial success of a film you have to look at what it cost to make.
A movie like Top Gun Maverick cost about 300 million to make when you factor in marketing and it is a reason studios look to foreign deals to help share the costs.
Award films are generally financially low risks and often passion projects for directors and actors they have on for bigger, general audience films.
Coda only cost 10 million to make.
#1 Deep Throat
Budget: $25,000
Profit: $22,528,467
While studio executives have long labeled an X (or NC-17) rating a kiss of death for box office totals, this infamous Linda Lovelace flick proved differently. The movie ushered in an era of what became known as “porno chic”—dirty movies that featured real actors, bona fide plots, and notable production values in an attempt to lure a more mainstream moviegoing public. The idea worked: Deep Throat ended up earning an ROI of 90,014 percent—a number that has kept it in the top spot for nearly 50 years, with no indication it’s likely to lose its top ranking any time soon.
#2 Facing the Giants
Budget: $100,000
Profit: $38,551,255
Sports movies have often led to major box office hits. But Alex Kendrick’s Facing the Giants had one additional plot point going for it: It’s a sports movie and a Christian drama, a sub-genre that has been turning modestly budgeted films into box office behemoths over the past several years. In this case, it meant an ROI of 38,451 percent.
I found it fascinating the polar opposites of #1 and #2.
Lots of Christian films are on the list and those Christian films are part of the hollywood/distribution system too.
I saw both Fireproof and Facing the Giants in a regular theater
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You also never see The Gap win any fashion awards but they sell a ton of clothes. McDonalds won’t win any Michelin Stars but people still love to eat there. So I don’t get why the movie industry would be any different.
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A Korean boy group has the #1 album, not Chopin or Itzhak Perlman. The best art is often not the most popular.
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The music awards come closest to what is popular, but even the Grammys have a lot of awards to give to artists who toil in less popular genres such as jazz and blues.
For example, Last of the Great Mississippi Delta Bluesmen: Live in Dallas featured a bunch of old timers, won a Grammy, sold around 1,000 copies total. Some Houston musicians played for Pinetop. All of them got Grammys, never made a dime past the gig, but they have (deserved) Grammys. You can see Diunna Greenleaf and Jonn Richardson with their respective bands around town when not doing the festivals and small tours. All these folks listed are fantastic musicians, toiling in a genre that doesn’t make a lot of money for most.
Pinetop Perkins
- Pinetop Perkins – piano and vocals
- Diunna Greenleaf – backing vocals
- Jonn Richardson – guitar
- James Rose – drums
- Stephen Schneider – harmonica
So we’re just gonna ignore how the DOD influence and force changes in scripts/story in order for movie productions to use their resources? There’s a whole Pentagon office dedicated to media entertainment that’s worked on several movies including the original Top Gun. Guess that’s all fine and dandy but we’re not innocent in government influence on movies either.
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Yes, yes we are, because they are the good guys with the guns.
Wait , wrong thread…carry on.
What would be recent examples of “DOD influence and force changes in scripts/story ” ?
Not being argumentative, just a bit ignorant and a tad bit lazy.
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So DoD does indeed review things for resource usage. And can influence productions and scripts for permission. Now the debatable point is is it the same as the Chinese government reviewing it before granting access to the market in general.
I think they’re the same sport, but are they in the same league?
From what I read China is far more Draconian. The DOD reviews and decides if they will participate but if a film gets made and they were not involved with it they cant stop it from being distributed and play in theaters.
I think y’all have summarized it accurately. Lots of war movies have been made here that don’t portray the US or US military in a favorable light. DoD Couldn’t stop them from being made or released or being successful.
The Boys in Company C. - 1978
Apocalypse Now - 1979
The Deer Hunter - 1979
Platoon - 1986
Full Metal Jacket - 1987
The above pictures were all made before big bad China was influencing Hollywood I think,
though some here may wish to disagree.
But if you want to make a movie about Tiannemen, Tibet, or Taiwan best of luck winning
the Chinese equivalent of best foreign film there.
A movie in this thread (Team America) didn’t make the military look very good either. Granted it was comedy but it was still hitting pretty hard on the US and the military.
One of the first things the DOD looks at is funding, will the movie get made and distribution.
They also look at how the military is presented, true to the values…includes villians too.
…from the article…
So be remiss if I didn’t about a few projects that historically the DoD has said we prefer not to collaborate on these. And so I’ve heard that that list includes Forrest Gump and the Avengers franchise – that they wanted military support access, but the scripts didn’t pass muster.
I think briefly, you know, we were looking at Captain America, the Winter Soldier back, you know, in 2013 or so. Some of those scenes were shot in Washington, D.C., but typically, I think I can’t speak to exactly what it was in the scripts that didn’t work out for the Department of Defense
Definitely not the same league. Just making the point that our government also influences and shapes our media. From the inception of what eventually became the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and the development of the Motion Picture Production Code (MPPC) to ensure films were not censored by local and state censorship boards in the early going of Hollywood cinema to the modern involvement of Pentagon media liaisons in the production process and so forth.
The US military has a valid interest in promoting and itself and it’s image through many avenues including films. Has it done so in such a way that the standard military film could be characterized as abject propaganda? Sure, but that’s the apples that the movie industry has to deal with. Same with the film industry engaging the Chinese market. Studios have to decide movie by movie if they can financially withstand being shut out of such a large market in whether to greenlight a film or not. Sometimes they can and sometimes they can’t. It’s worth noting that Disney has had 5 straight Marvel movies (their breadwinner film wise) shut out of China.
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You think Hollywood is trying to influence or brainwash the masses? Did you know all the military tributes we do at football games/basketball games are sponsored by the military?
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You left out A Thing Red Line
What makes him “poor”?
You do know Iceman is a character (and not real) that Val played in the movie and not Val himself right?
In retrospect you should be even more impressed with his screen performance now.